Aggressive 2nd Gen Buckfast

[moby]

I found this in an earlier discussion has anybody had colony aggression problems with second/third generation buckfast queens?

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12888

And should new beekeepers be aware of this potential problem seeing that most choose this strain for their gentle tendancies

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

My nice gentle original queen spawned the sort of daughter we all dread. However I'm pretty sure mum was a mongrol rather than Buckfast, so I guess it can happen to all strains.

 

[Tom Bick]

Its not just Buckfast queens that have this problem and I bet a number of the other queen available from breeders are worse than the Buckfast.

Yes and I agree that not enough is taught to new beekeepers on what potential problems they may encounter if they allow their hives to re-queen.

At my association suggestions were asked as to what a talk should be on and I made the suggestion “what to do if your lovely hive becomes the hive from hell” and it got the typical lets not talk about that.

 

[MrB]

mine re queened a few weeks ago and no such problems.

 

[plumberman]

IMO there are no hard and fast rules here, primarily as a result of the drone lottery. Daughter of a Danish buckfast has produced very gentle bees, whereas daughter of a very quiet NZ italian colony is definitely more feisty. No idea so far about any other merits of the bees.

Curiously enough I chose to breed from the NZ queen, and it was only swarm preparations by the buckfasts that produced a new queen.

Go figure..........................

 

[drstitson]

mons ab - your original may have been a non-specific mongrel but equally could have been a BF hybrid (or daughter of one) so your nasty offspring would then have been F2 or F3.

This sort of problem is a good reason to encourage people to keep local mongrels. Doesn't mean you can't selectively breed and certainly doens't mean nasties won't pop up every so often BUT less risk than running "pure" stocks together.

 

[dclewis]

If you start with Buckfast in an area with mongrels and breed, I understand that next gerenartions tend to be fiestier, mine certainly are. Question is if your select the most docile of this generation and subsequent generations how many generations are required to get you back to having bees that are as docile as the local mongals or better?

 

[drstitson]

"Question is if your select the most docile of this generation and subsequent generations how many generations are required to get you back to having bees that are as docile as the local mongals or better?"

Not many according to brother adam.

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

"Question is if your select the most docile of this generation and subsequent generations how many generations are required to get you back to having bees that are as docile as the local mongals or better?"

Not many according to brother adam.

But he "cheated" by using all his own drones?

 

[Midland Beek]

I found this in an earlier discussion has anybody had colony aggression problems with second/third generation buckfast queens?

No, in the case of the few excellent ones I have had from Hawaii.

 

[Crg]

I found this in an earlier discussion has anybody had colony aggression problems with second/third generation buckfast queens?

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12888

And should new beekeepers be aware of this potential problem seeing that most choose this strain for their gentle tendancies

The second generation and third generation Buckfast queens will be very docile.
If you mean randomly mating a Buckfast queen's offspring with anything.. then that offspring is only 50% Buckfast, and the next generation 25% Buckfast - ie not a Buckfast queen.


I always find it very odd when people go on about this sort of thing, I'm sure they must know how breeding works and yet they don't seem to apply it to bees.
If I have a greyhound and just let it mate with with anything it finds on the street, do you expect the second generation to be as fast, what about the third?
With bees the situation is worse, instead of just getting a slower dog, certain combinations can be hyper defensive.


In my area quite a few of my randomly mated Buckfast offspring turn out good, a couple will turn out a bit defensive by my standards, but even then they're mostly better than most colonies of bees I've seen in London.
Just like any random uncontrolled mating, the result is always going to be unknown.

This applies to any type of bee.

 

[hedgerow pete]

it is a well know fact that any cross breeding within the buckfast strains is very dodgy to do.

THE worst cross breed going for violence is a buckfast crossed with a AMM strain. i know i had them this year and a a compair i have delt with many times african bees and they are no where near as bad as that cross i ended up with.

what you need to get into your head is that even with some thing as small as a bee we do need to strickly follow the breeding practices or farmers and there animals.

as amatures we have no way of making sure that we breed perfect bees, to do that you realy need to AI the queens, any thing else is almost pot luck,

we can stack the odds greatly in our favour but then we still need to have our fingers crossed

as for buck fast they recon that the second gen is the worst with the third gen having a strong chance of reversion back to gentle

 

[drstitson]

breeder queens

has anyone here tried maintaining breeder queens like Brother Adam describes?

ie in a 4-5 frame nuc to limit egg laying rate in order to maximise potential.

presumably will allow you to keep your breeder stock for longer ie able to produce more 1st gen crosses before needing to buy in more breeders.

 

[Firefly]

So can someone explain to me how commercial Buckfast breeders actually do it? Do they literally AI queens, or was that a joke Pete? Or do they just have a large apiary of Buckfast bees (as far as possible from other apiaries and wild colonies!) and assume that all matings are with other Buckfast bees

I guess I could potter over to Hook Norton at the weekend and ask them. Or are Viktor and Lucy forum members and about to explain all...?

 

[enrico]

I would have said my second generation Buckfast was Ok until the bee inspector arrived yesterday..... I Had them on a double brood and split it for him to go through the bottom brood first. In thirty years I have never seen anything like it. They didn't just boil they exploded .... we both got stung so many times we lost count. All I could do is say 'they're not usually like this' and apologise. All he could do was suffer the stings and get on with the inspection. Of course they set all the other hives off and we had an hour of absolute hell. I was so embarrassed by the whole thing. I wonder if I should have said to him at the beginning to close them up again and come back on another day but you sort of bow to his authority and let him get on with it. I think if he had had a gallon of petrol my bees would have been fried! The only good thing was I was desease free but God what an evening. I never have to want to go through that again.
I couldn't sleep last night for worrying about them, but today they are quiet and placid again. Hope the inspector has recovered!!!!! So sorry, I will spank their bottoms!
E

 

[Crg]

it is a well know fact that any cross breeding within the buckfast strains is very dodgy to do.

Really? So cross breeding a.m. cecropia with Buckfast is dodgy... how about Buckfast with Italian or Carnica?

THE worst cross breed going for violence is a buckfast crossed with a AMM strain.

Many of the worst colonies I've seen for hyper defensiveness are a result of AMM type bees.

i know i had them this year and a a compair i have delt with many times african bees and they are no where near as bad as that cross i ended up with.

Where about's have you handled african bees?

as amatures we have no way of making sure that we breed perfect bees, to do that you realy need to AI the queens, any thing else is almost pot luck

We don't need to breed perfect bees, we just need to breed better bees.

as for buck fast they recon that the second gen is the worst with the third gen having a strong chance of reversion back to gentle

That statement doesn't mean anything - both for good and bad results in the second and third generation it depends on what those second and third generations have bred with.

 

[Crg]

So can someone explain to me how commercial Buckfast breeders actually do it? Do they literally AI queens, or was that a joke Pete? Or do they just have a large apiary of Buckfast bees (as far as possible from other apiaries and wild colonies!) and assume that all matings are with other Buckfast bees

Any breeder of any breed or race of honey bee needs to maintain control over who their queens mate with. A breeder can use a combination of II and isolated mating sites for improving/maintaining his stock, and random mating in less isolated mating sites (for production queens).

 

[Crg]

it is a well know fact that any cross breeding within the buckfast strains is very dodgy to do.

I just re-read that, and surely you didn't mean cross breeding within Buckfast strains themselves is very dodgy?

If you meaning crossing the Buckfast breed with anything else, page 113 of "Breeding the Honeybee" by Brother Adam has the results of some of his experiments with crossing the breed with other races of honeybee, both for the first cross (F1) and often the second cross (F2).

You'll see that a lot of crosses have very good temper. You can also buy a few of those crosses in the UK.

It'd be interested in seeing similar experiments and studies done with AMM type bees....

 

[sugarbush]

In the US buckfast breeders use AI to maintain the gentleness of the Buckfast strain. Second and third generation queens (open mated) are notoriously hot, which has lost a lot of support for the buckfast strain. If you want to maintain buckfasts here you have to buy new queens pretty much yearly and keep a close eye on swarming.

The Buckfasts we have came to this country 40 years ago and we have been unable to import any more since..... What we have is very carefully bred.

 

[sugarbush]

I always find it very odd when people go on about this sort of thing, I'm sure they must know how breeding works and yet they don't seem to apply it to bees.
If I have a greyhound and just let it mate with with anything it finds on the street, do you expect the second generation to be as fast, what about the third?
With bees the situation is worse, instead of just getting a slower dog, certain combinations can be hyper defensive.

It often amazes me how hard of a concept this is for some beekeepers to grasp.